Trying to connect a USB cable is a nightmare. One of their creators explained why this happens.
The USB paradox is one of the most familiar experiences of the digital age. Almost every time you try to plug in a USB cable, you get it wrong on the first try. It doesn't matter how much attention you pay to the connector or the cable or the icons on the cable. It's always wrong.
And there's a good reason for that! In an interview published Thursday by DesignNews, Intel's Ajay Bhatt explained why. Bhatt was part of the team that developed USB technology. Even at the beginning of its creation, they knew that making the connector rotatable would be a better user experience in the long run. But doing so would require twice as much wiring and more circuitry, which would significantly increase the cost.
"If you have too much cost for an unproven technology, then it might not work. So that was our fear. You have to be really conscious when you start," Bhatt said. "In hindsight, you can say it could have been better, but compared to where we were with serial and parallel ports, where each of the ports had logic, had multiple cables, and had no connectivity, USB is significantly better."
Bhatt shared his thoughts on what could be done.
"Any way you look at it, if we had given USB the ability to spin, it would have been much easier to use," he said. "We could have focused on a higher data rate to start with, like FireWire did. They were at 100MB and we were at 12MB.".
So the next time you try to charge your phone or connect it to your computer, you can blame the fact that it's cheaper for the difficulty it encounters when entering our devices.
